British Museum, 'Places of the Mind: British Watercolour Landscapes 1850–1950', 23 February – 27 August 2017

Exhibition supported in memory of Melvin R Seiden

Places of the Mind: British watercolour landscapes 1850–1950 will display a selection of stunning works from the British Museum’s rich collection of Prints and Drawings, over half of which have never previously exhibited or published, to examine the ways artists interpreted landscape on paper during the Victorian and early Modern period. It is the first exhibition to focus on landscape drawing during this era and explores the idea that each work is a construct of the mind and imagination of the artist - an attempt to convey not merely the physical properties of a landscape but its sense of place. The 125 watercolours and drawings on display range from highly coloured, detailed Pre-Raphaelite attempts to follow John Ruskin’s precepts to ‘go to nature’, to sweeping wash sketches painted on the spot by James McNeill Whistler and Philip Wilson Steer, to the abstractions from reality of artists like Graham Sutherland and Henry Moore who followed a different aesthetic.